Fat Man Caving

Filthy, Fat, Fifty and Back in the Hole! Not metaphorically this time. Though if we’re being honest, also metaphorically. After nearly five years sidelined by carpal tunnel, bad habits, career changes, middle age, work stress and enough excuses to pave I-5, I found myself wondering if the mountain still remembered me. But hobbies are fickle things; they tend to get-in-where-they-fit-in. Passions, on the other hand, care very little about my knee pain, cholesterol, employment history or carefully curated excuses. There’s something refreshingly honest about caving in that regard. Gravity still works. Mud is still slippery. And underground, nobody gives a damn about your LinkedIn profile. In the time it’s been since I sat down to write about this, or anything somebody besides Google’s search crawler might actually read, the maelstrom of life kept spinning. Career changes, injuries, middle age, funerals, inflation, stress and the general realization that the human bo...

Good Things Come to Those That Cave Stay Tuned

Guess who’s back? That’s right, it’s me, your favorite fat caver with a penchant for the dangerous, the whimsical, and the downright hilarious ways to end a day spending a copay at an urgent care! While you’ve been patiently waiting (or perhaps not-so-patiently, let’s be real), I’ve been busy cooking up some exciting updates for the blog. Firstly, I’m thrilled to announce that I’m working on updating the site. Starting in June, expect a fresh look, new posts, and—drum roll, please—video blogs! Yes, thanks to a few new interpretations of USDA filming rules where public lands are concerned, I can finally bring you along on my subterranean adventures with my compatriots, the Dead Canary Cavers in glorious high-definition. Stay tuned for some hilarious (and occasionally insightful) musings on my latest caving escapades, health tips, along my fitness journey. And speaking of adventures, I’ve got my eye on Sawyer's Cave, or was it Boulder Cave? Both? Either way, who wouldn’t want to wat...

Yes, I am still around here... somewhere. I suppose it is best to say that I've been on what the kids call a 'side quest' if I am using the term correctly. While performing one of those pivot maneuvers, the idea of which I was so causal in flaunting about in my last post, my wife and I ended up pausing and reordering quite a few of the details swirling about us and our family. My clever plot to jump on a parallel professional course rather quickly mutated into something of a perpendicular arrangement - and so far, we are all better off for it. After taking a few weeks off to travel with my wife and kids while kicking off the tail end of what I will call 'eight years of predictably chaotic jet-lag', I am safely back in school and life has returned to a much missed five-to-nine cadence. Children flourish upon a platform built on routine and stability and while occasionally hectic as I settle into it, my new schedule has allowed me to contribute to our home life in a m...

 Pro tip: when the perfect storm comes, rig yourself to ride the waves and wind away from it forever.  If raising a half dozen children has offered me an object lesson that has stuck, it is the virtue of being flexible and expecting to exercise that flexibility at a moment's notice, no matter what pushes against you. Being ready to pivot your gate while en route to any goal can greatly minimize the time spent off-track. I've inadvertently run though a growth spurt over the last few weeks that has served to recenter several aspects of my life. Frankly, it was overdue, but never the less, it has snapped me back into entirely positive frame of mind and I look forward to the next chapter of my life with renewed zeal. My new eating habits continue to pay off and I have not compromised in my goals in this area one iota. As a matter of fact, I stood in the kitchen today, frying a smoked sausage & cheese dish for my wife and I when a the pair of ill-fitting pants of the usual size...

We're going to try a change of pace this week. Instead of posting about the cheat day that came and went without notice, or the mostly carb-less Chinese food I had a few days after (no rice, no noodles, lots of veggies), I'm going to take a stab at answering some of the questions that have been generated by my friends and family. I am always flattered that the think enough of me to consider knowledgeable on one topic or another, when really, I'm just a guy that has issues turning his brain off when it finds something it reeeaally likes. The sword cuts both ways... any who, let's go! Oh and I'm not a trained geologist, so the following opinions are based on both independent research of the available data and personal observation, so feel free to correct me in the comments. If no one corrects me, then I will assume that, by default, I am the wisest caver that ever lived. You decide... "What are pressure ridges in lava flows? How do they form and how big can they ...

If I mention a product or service in a post or provide a link to somewhere, I do so because it's a reflection of how this road is unfolding for me and not because I'm collecting nickles from click-through traffic. I like to give a well deserved nod to those that I believe in from time to time. I'm not necessarily opposed to turning a dime by way of writing - as a matter of fact I write a bit of fiction as a hobby - but monetizing has never the goal with this blog. That said, I made a spur of the moment inquire to the good folks at Keto Chow a few weeks ago by entering a silly, one sentence request and a link to my fat melting plan into the chat window on their website. I didn't really think much of it. I work in technology and, hey, you never know if you're talking to a scripted chat-bot or a third-party fulfillment center with quotas to fill, in which case an unsolicited link to anywhere would almost certainly be filtered out as spam. In any case, I surmised that ...

  On New Business.... My doctor's visit today went well and I am glad to report that I have lost right at 15 pounds. The plan, two shakes a day, a snack & a sensibly fatty meal continues to pay off. But, instead of 30 days to start, I have decided to extend this initial phase to 60 days. You see, my wife has decided to join me on this journey. I think she may love bacon more than me. Not really, but maybe. It's getting to be that time of year again, where I start looking towards the opening of the season, reconcile my bucket list for the year and compare notes with my brother and Steve. As a club, we've mulled around a few ideas too - there are always going to be caves to go back to or those that have been back-burnered for whatever reason. In the neighborhood of certainty, we are going back to Deadhorse and its neighbors, but a new plan is hatching and it's rather ambitious for us. And as a result, I am setting some an additional goal for myself to ensure ...

Thanks for joining me again! It's been an interesting bunch of days so far... I am sleeping better. Partly, because my ribs are now a month into mending, the rest I attribute to the weight I know I have lost. Although I don't plan to weigh in officially until I see my doctor next week, there are hints of progress, long buried in my soft flesh that are beginning to surface as the excess fat on me loses its grip. I am stepping lighter, sitting taller and have a little more energy to expend in the realm of managing my life. I've been sticking to 'the plan' as rigidly as I can; two shakes a day, a snack and a reasonably fatty, low carb meal in the evening. Over the last few days, I've been eating less as well. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it seems that I've been subconsciously reducing my portion sizes to what I assume is a more normal level, based on the actual needs of my body. This has mostly affected eating in the evenings. I feel li...